Assembled: Now The Real Work Begins
by angelofjoy
Summary: A collection of short stories revolving around the Avengers and their interactions with each other. Other Marvel based characters may come and go but I am trying to stay within the cinamatic universe.


**A/N: This is my first attempt at anything Avengers or Marvel based. This collection will be made up of short stories to build up relationships among the avengers.**

 **The story is based on a prompt by the good folks over at The Beta Branch and falls into the October Challenge they issued to their writers. I have worked on all 5 prompts they posted and I am using them as Five Fics for Five Fandoms. The others are scattered among my other stories.**

 **Based on Prompt** ** _"Hope you are quite prepared to die"_**

 _The Memorial Wall_

The words rang in Natasha's mind like her very own death knell. They followed her from the Red Room, through her career as a spy, and on through the rise and fall of all that she'd tried to build. Of all she tried to change, tried to hide from the prying eyes of what was becoming a secret-less, shadow filled world.

More than the graduation ceremony, more than her first kill, those word echoed in her mind's eye and followed her like the breath of those she'd taken. She was ready to die, that had been trained into her, but what did it really mean to be prepared to die? Was she prepared any longer? No, there was too much to do.

Natasha knew that Steve Rogers caught her once again staring at the memorial wall in the new Avengers building. She knew that he wondered just how many of the names were names that she knew. Truth be told, with his short time with S.H.I.E.L.D, he knew few of those names that filled the time between his icy sleep. The names after were found to be familiar, many of them, and then some were just random strangers who had offered their lives in assistance - a trait that Steve had believed died with him all those year ago.

Natasha has seen him coming, had heard his soft footsteps. He was the super soldier, enhanced in every way, and yet she still had a very good ear.

"You should know better than to try to sneak up on me," Natasha warned without taking her eyes off of the wall before her.

"I wasn't trying to," Steve confessed and threw his hands out in front of him in a gesture of surrender.

"You know, if you need me, we have comms for that. You don't have to come looking for me to get me back to work." Natasha said with a sigh that could be interpreted as irritation.

She'd walked away from her work for a moment, looking for solace and quiet, but had gotten distracted by the wall once more. "I stepped away for two minutes and you had to come looking for me?"

"No, the session had finished. I was heading off to my office and happened upon you."

"You've been reading too much. You don't sound like yourself." She teased. She'd resolved to change her composure to stop him from asking more questions.

"I like to read. Mostly the classics but I have been getting into the modern novel that I missed out on. It's how I turn my brain off from all of this. I know it's something that I need to do to counter act the things I saw when Wanda had control of my mind. Is that what this is for you? A solitary place for you to escape?" Steve asked sincerely. "It's a busy hallway, many people come up here, and through this passage, that's why the wall was put here. If you wanted to be alone, you could have gone anywhere else."

"I didn't come up here to be alone," Natasha said softly, a tone that Steve hadn't been expecting, but then again Nat wasn't one to show her emotions. "I came up here on my way to the Crow's Nest to see how Clint is doing with his recruits and I got distracted. I'll get back to work."

"Clint is in the building?" Steve inquired slyly. "I thought he took the weekend to be with Laura and the kids."

"He's here, and you know he's here. Why do you want to keep me talking?" Natasha asked suspiciously as she flipped to interrogation mode.

"I don't want to pry. I'm worried, is all. You get distracted a lot by this wall and something tells me it's not just about Banner."

"It's not at all about Banner."

"Then what is it?"

"Are you prepared to die, Steve?" For the first time, she turned and looked at him.

"That's why I enlisted in the first place. I'd give my life, I gave my life, to my country, and I am fully reconciled with that."

"But are you prepared?" Nat asked again. "I mean really? What does it even mean? It's different for everyone, right?"

"Well, for me it means that you are ready to face death," Steve said and moved to lean on the railing that looked over the balcony and down to the lower levels. The wall before them stretched all the way to the bottom floors and there were names that ran from floor to ceiling with room for more.

"No, we face death every time we walk out of this building. That is not being prepared to die. Do you think any of these people were really prepared the day that they died?" she asked and motioned to the wall. "Unless you woke up in the morning, put your affairs in order, decided that life was not worth living and then killed yourself, you are not prepared to die. Unless you have stopped living, and sometimes that is what it feels like or that we don't have any other reason to live rather than to fight, and that is a sad thought."

"I suppose it's all a matter of perspective," Steve said as he looked at her with thought and concern in his boyish face. "As a child I was told I was sickly, I would never be cured and because my family was poor, I wouldn't last long. So I did what I could to fill my life and experience things so that I might be ready to die. Death can just creep up on you."

"Were you ready to die on that plane?"

"I made a choice for the greater good."

"But as you crashed that plane into the snow, were your last thoughts of how neatly tied up your life was? How you'd accomplished everything you ever wanted to do? How you made amends to the people you hurt, sought out forgiveness for the people you killed or told every one you loved that you loved them?"

"No."

"Then you weren't prepared to die," Natasha stated and moved away as if that were the end of it.

"Why is it bothering you so much?" Steve asked before she could flee.

"Because there was a time in my life when I was so brain washed that I believed my sole purpose in life was to do the bidding of the KGB. I had been trained, sterilized, made to cheat, steal and murder. There are more names on this wall of people who are dead because of me, rather than those who I tried to save. It's a constant reminder that when I am asked if I am all set to die, and I say yes, it's a lie. I have snuffed out lives that were far from over and those people weren't ready to die. I took that from them. Me, and I have to make up for that," she added with a grand gesture toward the wall.

"But you have changed, you have paid the price for your wrongs and you've been working to make them right. There has to be some merit and comfort in that."

"You were never a bad guy before you became a good guy," Natasha snapped. "I will always be a bad person trying to make things right, and this wall reminds me of that every goddamn day."

"We can move the wall."

"No, leave it where it is. I need the reminder, but my place isn't here training people. I have too many wrongs to right. I have to make peace with it. I should be out looking for Banner, or HYDRA, or whatever. I'm not at all ready to die and I need to get to that point."

"Do you just want to make up your own missions as you go?" Steve asked kindly.

Natasha could feel his eyes burrowing into her as he watched her put her emotions back in the box they shouldn't have gotten free from. She wanted to shake off the feeling and knew that something within her had gone soft because this would have never happened before.

"I'm a spy and without a spy organization to handle me, I'm a fish out of water," Natasha said with a sigh.

"I know how you feel," Steve chuckled but there was a darkness in the way he'd laughed that Natasha had never seen before. "Tell you what, I'll send you out to Coulson."

"Coulson is dead."

"I have it on good authority that he is not and he is continuing on under the S.H.I.E.L.D banner. If you want to be a spy, and you need out of here, talk to Hill. Tell her I told you and she'll connect you with Coulson."

"This is insane. We saw Coulson die."

"And many people saw me die, figuratively speaking, and yet here I am. Fury has a thing for faking deaths, especially his own."

"Who else knows he's alive?"

"A select loyal group of S.H.I.E.L.D agents, Fury, me, and now you," Steve answered. "Think about it. I would rather you stay. I value you as a team member, but if you would like to moonlight with Phil, I understand. I don't see the appeal, but hey, to each his own. It's much more spy and espionage with him and far less turning the recruits into your version of soldiers. Which I imagine brings up a lot of your past, and could be a big part of the problem."

"I know we aren't going as far as they did in the Red Room," Nat said to stop him.

"No, but you'll always have it in your mind that these people will need to be able to handle those ones," Steve said kindly.

"I should be out looking for Banner."

"We know where Banner is and we're prepared to leave him be for now."

"There is work to do."

"Yes, indeed there is, but if you are unhappy, I don't want to keep you here against your will," Steve said with a smile.

"You wouldn't," Natasha said saucily. "I'd like to see you try."

"Fair enough, but that is the wonderful thing about the freedom we fight for. You have the choice and if it helps you to prepare for whatever you feel you need to prepare for, then do it. Because I need you one hundred percent on board with the Avengers, not distracted mentally and cursing at the walls."

"We could all used a little time away from each other," Nat said with a nod.

"Talk to Hill, I'm sure Coulson and May would love to have your expertise for a few of their missions."

"May is with Phil?" Natasha gasped. "Seriously how many names on this wall are just for show?"

"Far too many," Steve said with a laugh as he squeezed her shoulder and walked away.


End file.
